Posted on 10/07/2005 4:59:16 AM PDT by shuckmaster
How should evolution be taught in schools? This being America, judges will decide
HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page. Yet it is more complex than it appears.
In Harrisburg a trial began last week that many are comparing to the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, when a Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Now the gag is on the other mouth. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in public-school science classes was an unconstitutional blurring of church and state. But those who think Darwinism unGodly have fought back.
Last year, the school board in Dover, a small rural school district near Harrisburg, mandated a brief disclaimer before pupils are taught about evolution. They are to be told that “The theory [of evolution] is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.” And that if they wish to investigate the alternative theory of “intelligent design”, they should consult a book called “Of Pandas and People” in the school library.
Eleven parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, two lobby groups, are suing to have the disclaimer dropped. Intelligent design, they say, is merely a clever repackaging of creationism, and as such belongs in a sermon, not a science class.
The school board's defence is that intelligent design is science, not religion. It is a new theory, which holds that present-day organisms are too complex to have evolved by the accumulation of random mutations, and must have been shaped by some intelligent entity. Unlike old-style creationism, it does not explicitly mention God. It also accepts that the earth is billions of years old and uses more sophisticated arguments to poke holes in Darwinism.
Almost all biologists, however, think it is bunk. Kenneth Miller, the author of a popular biology textbook and the plaintiffs' first witness, said that, to his knowledge, every major American scientific organisation with a view on the subject supported the theory of evolution and dismissed the notion of intelligent design. As for “Of Pandas and People”, he pronounced that the book was “inaccurate and downright false in every section”.
The plaintiffs have carefully called expert witnesses who believe not only in the separation of church and state but also in God. Mr Miller is a practising Roman Catholic. So is John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that life is like a cup of tea.
To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding”, Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is “because I want a cup of tea.” None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.
It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the “I want tea” explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory—which he called “appalling theology”—in science classes.
Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Intelligent designers deny that this is why they attack it, but this week the court was told by one critic that the authors of “Of Pandas and People” had culled explicitly creationist language from early drafts after the Supreme Court barred creationism from science classes.
In the Dover case, intelligent design appears to have found unusually clueless champions. If the plaintiffs' testimony is accurate, members of the school board made no effort until recently to hide their religious agenda. For years, they expressed pious horror at the idea of apes evolving into men and tried to make science teachers teach old-fashioned creationism. (The board members in question deny, or claim not to remember, having made remarks along these lines at public meetings.)
Intelligent design's more sophisticated proponents, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, are too polite to say they hate to see their ideas championed by such clods. They should not be surprised, however. America's schools are far more democratic than those in most other countries. School districts are tiny—there are 501 in Pennsylvania alone—and school boards are directly elected. In a country where 65% of people think that creationism and evolution should be taught side by side, some boards inevitably agree, and seize upon intelligent design as the closest approximation they think they can get away with. But they may not be able to get away with it for long. If the case is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, intelligent design could be labelled religious and barred from biology classes nationwide.
And evolution is repackaged as a clever disguise as presenting theories as facts.
No matter that the gap is filled many times with many different opinions. Now that is what is called "real science" in educational circles.
You made a mistake. Church should replace public school because that is the only place that truth matters.
Something wrong with that? If you think that the Bible outlaws slavery, I would like to know where it says so.
For the moment I'll assume that you are joking, though I am not certain. Problem is, no statement is so wacky that it cannot be asserted in all seriousness by a biblical creationist. At least twice in the last few months I've had Freepers seriously promoting slavery as a palliative for social ills, and as an aid to poor inadequates who lack the moral compass to guide their own lives. Naturally they were able to point at biblical authority to support their views. Oddly enough the Freepers in question saw themselves as the slaveholder, not the slave.
I just remembered something else that I find interesting about this whole issue. Fitzroy found little support for any of his fundamentalist views amongst the officers of the Beagle. This suggests that amongst educated men even by 1830 it had been realised that Genesis does not stack up as a meaningful historical account, but should be read as an allegory. Fitzroy wasn't a fool though, he and Darwin would avidly read the latest volume of Lyell together as they arrived in the Beagle's ports of call (Darwin was having them shipped out), though Fitzroy must have found Lyell's conclusions utterly unpalatable.
Then how do you explain all those millions-of-years-old dinosaur bones?
I mean, how do you explain them in a way that doesn't reveal that you're grossly ignorant of multiple fields of science, and hundreds of independent lines of evidence?
Little do you know how little you know.
Creationists like to fantasize that it was Darwin who turned people away from Biblical literalism, but people (most of them devout God-fearing people) were realizing that there were big problems with Biblical literalism (at least as it concerns natural history) as far back as the 1700's if not earlier, and by the mid 1850's (still before Darwin had published his famous book) the evidence was too overwhelming to ignore.
For example, by that time most geologists had realized that the geologic record was not consistent with a global flood. In 1857 Hugh Miller -- a creationist geologist -- wrote of his conclusions that at most, the Biblical flood was the embellished record of a local flood in the Mideast, since geology showed no signs of a global flood. On page 327 of his book, "The Testimony of the Rocks, he wrote:
"No man acquainted with the general outlines of Palaeontology, or the true succession of the sedimentary formations, has been able to believe, during the last half century, that any proof of a general deluge can be derived from the older geologic systems, -- Palaeozoic, Secondary [Mesozoic], or Tertiary."Similarly, in the 1700's many lines of evidence led to widespread doubt about the Bible's 6000-year chronology for the age of the Earth. By the mid 1850's estimates of millions of years were suggested, and the Earth has been known to be on the order of a billion or more years old since at least 1911. Calculations of the age of the Earth were converging on the true age as long ago as the 1920's -- for example: 4.0 billion years (Russell, 1921), 3.4 billion years (Rutherford 1929); 4.6 billion years (Meyer 1937); and 3 to 4 billion years (Starik 1937). The number hasn't changed appreciably since the 1940's, when it converged to 4.5 +/- 0.1 billion years due to advances in analytical equipment (thanks to the Manhattan project).
But, hey, I guess the modern-day literalists know better than to make the mistake of paying any attention to 300+ years of accumulated evidence, observations, and discoveries, eh?
True, but the argument was over Europeans. IIRC, someone around here is also from South America.
Honestly, how do you know this isn't the case? What evidence do you have that the Bible is a not the direct dictation from the Almighty?
2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20&21.
You're not reading and understanding the answer does not make the answer invalid.
Have you ever read Darwins theory? If so, read it again objectivley, I have provided you with a link so that you will not have to buy a copy from one of the Creationist sites, since they are just about the only ones that have it for sale.
Maybe your god needs to tinker, but Mine speaks them perfectly in the first place. Sorry you serve such a weak indecisive god, try mine, Christ Jesus for a while.
yup, plenty fo proof that the god of this world, the one the evolutionist, abortionist and other Christ haters serve is incompetant to say the least, more reason to give up that god and follow the True Living God of Creation, Christ Jesus.
day .
Don't lie, for if you say yes and I start to proof it to you using Scripture it will become apparant real fast wheter you are truthful or not.
So you think it's generally grade school and high school students who develop, replace and refine scientific theories?
OK, show me any college or science site that has observed and tested evolution, and then we will get back to the basics of defining the evolution you use as an example.
For what they refer to as provable evolution is not evolution at all, but simple adaprting. And if you start with that moth thing, be careful, be very careful. For it is untrue.
That claim was never made by Darwin's wife, or any of his family. It was made by an English evangelist known as "Lady Hope" and then later disseminated in a pamphlet from the Moody Bible Institute in America.
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